This intimate epic from writer/director Jia Zhang Ke explores the rapid pace of China's modernization through the lens of one family's choices over the course of 26 years. In the city of Fenyang in 1999, a woman named Shen Tao (Zhao Tao) is torn between a coal miner and a nouveau-riche businessman. The movie then jumps ahead to 2014, when a divorced Tao is estranged from both her wealthy husband and her spoiled-brat son Dollar. The story then concludes in 2025 Australia, where Dollar (Dong Zijian) is a college student struggling to reconnect with his past and the culture of his birth.